an exposé of cool public art & culture in and around oakland, california

E-ville Wheaties ~ part I

This is another abandoned building that gets frequently used by local artists… I’ve also featured this location before, but spotted this piece last weekend as I whizzed by and knew I needed to come back to feature it. I love it.

The building is located on San Pablo Avenue, just across the Emeryville border. I drove this stretch of San Pablo probably a thousand times over the years and it never ceased to amaze me how dramatically things shifted across that city line. Hell, even the street lamps were prettier! To me, this long-standing boarded up building looks more Oakland than antiseptic Emeryville. Regardless, I love to check on it from time to time to see what folks have thrown up…

What I love about this piece is its depth, not to mention its message. I actually tried to watch Glenn Beck last week just to see what all the hullabaloo is about… all I can say is, the man is f&*#ing crazy! I had to turn it off after just 5 minutes, and find it hard to believe (and sad really) that millions of Americans have simply shut off their brains to consume this man’s rants as gospel. Thank god we have artists like this who are willing to question the status quo.

It’s a wheatpaste on top of a wheatpaste and has some killer stencil work (I think) in the tiny bomber plane…

The backdrop consists of 6 large “Fox News” posters mounted to plywood and then stenciled with the plane and the repeated words “media blitz media blitz…” But on top of all that is mounted another wheatpaste… a monster war machine of a tank with the words “Fox News” emblazoned across the top. The whole thing seems to be covered in some type of plastic or acrylic material to protect it.

See below right for fragments of all the older wheatpastes on the sidewalk below… There were a couple others up nearby; I’ll feature them in my next post or two, which should be on the shorter side, as last week’s were kinda time consuming. Please check back.